Library Staff Write: 100 Novels That Shaped Our World - Rebels

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Lewisham Libraries are participating in BBCs year-long celebration of literature – 100 Novels that Shaped Our World throughout 2020. 

During October, after a short intermission, members of staff from Lewisham Branch will be writing about the books selected by the panel at the BBC, covering the theme of Rule Breakers. The 10 books this month are :

  •  Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell  
  • Bartleby, the Scrivener – Herman Melville 
  • A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 
  • Orlando – Virginia Woolf 
  • Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter 
  • Zami: A New Spelling of My Name – Audre Lorde 
  • Habibi – Craig Thompson 
  • The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
  • Journalist – P. G. Wodehouse 
  • How to be Both – Ali Smith

We have the books available in print and as well as e-books and our reading groups will be choosing some of them to delve into throughout the year. Please check our catalogue or our various ebook portals : RB digital, Overdrive or BorrowBox



 ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by Anthony Burgess for ‘Rule Breakers’ by Paul Nash 


Madonna never wants to hear ‘Like A Virgin’ again. Run DMC were embarrassed by ‘Walk This Way’. ‘Brass in Pocket’ makes Chrissy Hynde cringe. Thin Lizzy grew to despise ‘Whiskey in the Jar’. Frank Sinatra was contemptuous of ‘Strangers in the Night’. And Anthony Burgess was not a fan of his own masterpiece ‘A Clockwork Orange’. 

He said later that he ‘repudiated’ it and it was only ‘knocked off for money’. We, of course, respectfully disagree with all of these great artists. Just as I remembered, Alex from Clockwork Orange is one of the great Rule Breakers in all literature, a truly horrible narrator. 

This is my second time reading Clockwork Orange. I re-read it for the review, my wife, Vic owns a copy and I was not disappointed by it - unlike some other books that I re-read years later. I think, I first came across this book because my friends were reading it at secondary school. This would have been in the late Eighties when the film was still banned. Back then I borrowed a copy from Crofton Park library.

There are a few books that get the balance right where the protagonist does disgusting stuff but as a reader you can’t look away because you are so drawn into their world – I can think of ‘Lolita’ and ‘American Psycho’. I think that we are drawn to Alex because he is such a congenial guide. He gleefully introduces us to his world and to the language that his gang uses. He seems very keen to teach us how to speak Nadsat. 

This fictional language is what really makes this book great. As well as giving Alex something to teach us, it also makes the gang feel authentic and it gives the reader’s brain a sort of puzzle to work out – in the same way that it is pleasing to work out a clever joke. We become grateful to Alex for helping us with this. I had assumed that this language was carefully constructed – so I was amazed to read that Burgess wrote the book in three weeks (he wrote lots of books, but three weeks seems really fast) 

Unlike other great dystopian books like 1984 and Brave New World, I don’t think there is anything futuristic or science fiction about Clockwork Orange apart from the language. It feels like Sixties Britain with fashion conscious gangs of Mods. Even the treatment that Alex is subjected to is essentially ‘Aversion Therapy’ based on images - that was a well-known system when the book was written. For this reason the book doesn’t feel dated – there are no predictions about society that turn out to be either true or false. 

I have tried to dodge telling you the plot – if by some miracle you have avoided the book and the film then you have some disturbing treats in store that I won’t spoil. The film is very faithful to the book (if anything the sex and violence is toned down in the film). The film has the wonderful music and unforgettable images, but you get more involved with Alex in the book because you get more of his voice. And there is an extra final chapter in the book that was left off of the American version of the book and hence the film too. Without giving the game away – I think that it makes the author’s views less ambiguous. 

 

Habibi review by Craig Thompson for ‘Rule Breakers’ by Elizabeth Grellet

 
I first came across Craig Thompson's Blankets in Lewisham library as it stands out from the other graphic novels, it’s about 3 times chunkier than your standard graphic novel. Craig Thompson masters the art of illustrations with solid storytelling and Blankets is a very touching first love story. 

Blankets gets plenty of interest and issues from the Library  for good reasons. I heard about his other books , spur-of-the-moment, Carnets de Voyage and Habibi when a user was returning it and recommended it! When I saw that Habibi was on the list of books for the 100 Novels that shaped our world in the rule breakers theme, I reserved a copy through TLC.

Habibi is quite a departure from his last two books. If you like being whisked to new places, between reality and magic, a place that combines a dreamy sense of life and the hellish nightmares of modern truths, then you will enjoy the novel! 

Habibi, a tale that spans throughout the ages- one moment you are in the Islamic golden age of the 1001 nights and the next, surely you are back in the 21st century, but it cleverly keeps you pondering.

 
 

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